In case anyone is still thinking about or has any interest in Smash – the series that NBC recently banished to the wastelands of the Saturday Night tv schedule – I’m not quite done with it.
From my write-up following Episode 5 – The Fringe:
All of a sudden Producer Jerry Rand is throwing his weight around. First he’s going to cut Karen’s song (he claims the song is ‘too intellectual’). Then he manages to piss off Derek. All signs of what? All together now – Jerry’s exit likely as soon as next week.
Sure enough, Jerry is out. They had to bring back Grace Gummer who is Meryl Streep’s daughter who is playing Eileen and Jerry’s daughter Kate to help change Jerry’s mind. That along with Julia finding the ‘silver bullet’ – a document from the Marilyn Monroe Estate which granted EXCLUSIVE USE of the materials to Eileen and Julia. That was fine. Jerry had to capitulate because otherwise they might have shut the show down. Adios Jerry.
Also from my previous Smash post:
Also remember that Tom is pro-Ivy. And we all know that the Liaisons production is going to crash and burn soon enough. It would have to – to get Ivy back to Bombshell.
Well, guess what? Liaisons did crash and burn. First the opening night audience was either bored, disinterested, or asleep. Even though Terry’s bawdy song injected some laughter into the affair, everyone knew it wasn’t enough. Then Terry fell off the on-stage swing causing grievous injury, rendering him unable to perform. So Timothy, having no other viable option, announced the show was closing. Wasn’t that the broadest of smiles on Ivy’s face on hearing that news? Especially since earlier in the episode, she had told Terry point-blank that she wished she could leave Liaisons.
What I didn’t see coming was Karen going from a mild disagreement with Tom’s new directing efforts to quitting Bombshell. Tom was just named Director last week.
Since we weren’t shown any back-story last week about Julia and Scott Nichols (played by Jessie L. Martin), I was a tad surprised that from the looks exchanged between Scott and Julia – we could easily surmise that these two do have a back-story, which will soon escalate to being a present tense story.
On the plus side, Scott has agreed to do Jimmy and Kyle’s show, now directed by – who else – Derek Wills. But there’s a hitch – Scott can only get the show on the facility’s main stage – the grown-up theater – as opposed to the basement theater which Derek described as being only marginally larger than his bathroom, by basically betting his job on the show. As he says, It would have to be a home run.
But once Scott saw and loved the new song Rewrite This Story created by Jimmy to get the theme of the Hit Song show out in front of the audience his opinion would change. Why? Of course the song – a duet between Jimmy and Karen – was a home run. Likely a grand-slam.
In the warm afterglow of the song – Jimmy asks Karen out for a drink. And she agrees. Only there’s a problem.
Derek stepped up and told Jimmy to back off. “Karen and I have a history“. So rather than Karen and Jimmy heading out to the nearest watering hole – It was Derek who escorted Karen out. Jimmy was left to go off with Kyle.
So the music whirled, the dancers danced, the singers sang, until the music stopped. And we lost some players. Likely Terry and Timothy and the whole Liaisons crew, like Jerry and daughter Katie. We have Julia back in the Producers chair, Tom and Derek both now directing, Karen quitting Bombshell, and Ivy likely back in as Marilyn.
Oh yeah, the name of this Episode was Musical Chairs. And didn’t they get that right?
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